Funeral

A part of yesterday afternoon was spent saying good-bye to my first charge's grandmother.

Prior to heading out I quickly posed a question on a group about tips for taking a toddler to a funeral. The only response was, "leave her with someone".  Well, we do not leave the tot so that was not an option.


Here are my top 5 tips for attending a funeral with a nearly preschool aged child

1. Know your child. If you are in tune with them you will have a good idea if such an idea is likely to be a success or a flop.

2. In advance: it's really handy to already own appropriate attire. Shopping for hours for shoes and a dress is not fun for anyone.

3. Talk about what will be expected. My wording was, "we all need to turn our talking off while the service is on. I will let you know when we can talk again".  No threats or bribes. I did say that if we all got too loud we would need to leave the room and I really wanted to be there for our buddies.

4. Bring quiet, easy to dole out snacks. I offered raisins one at a time. Lesson here: bring the snack in a quiet container.

5. Sit close to an escape route. We did not need to use the quick way out but we were prepared in case that would have been necessary.

Let's eat in

Dinner out attempt #2 was going well until out tot stumbled on a shard of hard plastic in her ice cream . The server's only comment was "sorry about that". And with that my restaurant reviewing career ends with a message sent to Alberta health services with a complaint.

In other news, today was Field Trip #1 for the Mama Preschool pals. I thought it was going to be a weak turn out for Sports day but was thrilled to have 7 kids join us for some active play. We spent two hours playing, laughing, chatting, snacking, and enjoying our buddies.

Cafe in thr Selkirk Hotel

I was looking forward to reviewing yesterday's lunch visit but the meal did not quite go as planned.

The cafe was busy but not bursting. It took a long time to be seated. How long? Long enough for a bathroom visit plus handwashing plus 5 more mibutes of waiting. The hostess promised water aftet seating us. No water.

No server.

Tried to make eye contact with the hostess, and the 3 servers but they did not glance our way.

We waited.

And waited.

New people arrived, were served water, and had their orderd taken.

I would have waved or got up to ask for service but there was a long stretch of not seeing any staff at all.

For the first time in my life I opted to walk out.

The upside: we will go somewhete for dinner tonight